


Make It Shallow

by treefrogie84



Series: Old Guard Bingo [10]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Buried Alive, Gen, POV Nile Freeman, The team never found Booker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26958487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: Nile screams herself awake, choking on phantom grave dirt and ice. Andy and Quynh, Nicky and Joe all watch her carefully, but say nothing until she has her breathing under control.---------------When Booker has been buried in the frozen Russian countryside for over 200 years and Copley still figures out what they can do.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Old Guard Bingo [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901185
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45
Collections: The Old Guard Bingo





	Make It Shallow

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a fill for Folktober, spawned by prompts Oak and Snake (Thanks Thayer!). Which became Booker being buried alive which became... this. 
> 
> No beta, we die like immortals.
> 
> Even more than usual, I'm not sure I'm doing Nile justice here. If I'm off base, let me know.

Nile screams herself awake, choking on mud and ice in the dead of night, waiting for the room to stop spinning, for the heavy blanket to feel less like a closed grave.

Andy and Quynh barely look over from their nest on the far side of the room, curled around each other, but Nicky and Joe are already sitting up. Nicky has a gun in his hand while Joe blinks against the light they left on.

“Nile?” Nicky asks. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, just a…” She swallows, takes a deep breath. “Sorry. Just a bad dream.” She forces her hands to release the blanket, pushes herself towards the headboard while breathing slowly and steadily. “Just a bad dream,” she mutters again, wishing she could believe it.

Joe and Nicky share a look before sitting up themselves, and now she’s woken everyone. Awesome.

“Tell us about it?” Joe instructs. Nicky pushes off the bed, padding silently into the kitchen and fills a glass of water, handing it to Nile.

She sucks it down, trying to figure out how to get the feeling across.

“Choking,” she starts. “He’s choking, on mud and ice, and he can’t breathe, can’t even move. He’s trapped and—“ she stumbles to a stop. “He dies and then he comes back, but he’s stopped fighting it.” Shivering, she pulls the blanket back over her torso, wishing it wasn’t too late for coffee. Hell, at this point, she’d take tea, disgusting leaf water as it is. As long as it’s hot and not viscous at all.

“His name is Sebastien, we think,” Nicky murmurs. “We never found him.”

“There are fates worse than death, for us,” Joe takes over. “Death is… an occupational hazard. But capture.”

“We were in the Congo.” Andy shifts, sitting up. Quynh stays silent, still wrapped around her, but Nile is pretty certain she is awake. “When he died. By the time we followed the remnants of Napoleon’s army north, he was already caught. Peasants,” she spits, “and their obsession with witches. They hung him, stabbed him, shot him, drowned him, and in the end, buried him. We never found him.”

There’s a story there, Nile thinks. There has to be, with the amount of hatred and vitriol dripping from Andy’s voice. But now is not the time. “You blame yourself.”

“It was my fault.” Andy pushes herself out of bed, drags a jacket off a chair and heads outside. Nile watches her go, wondering if she should go after her or…

Joe has dragged out an old book, a journal by the look of it, and is flipping through pages. Looking up, he bites his lip. “Earlier than the last five years,” he tells Nicky, before pulling a pen from somewhere and writing something on the page.

“Climate change,” Quynh says sadly. “Perhaps we should try to find him again. It’s been some years.”

Joe and Nicky nod, putting their notebook away and pulling their blanket over their laps. Nicky hands Joe a different book over his shoulder before grabbing his own battered paperback from the duffle under the edge of their bed. They’ll stay awake as long as she does, Nile realizes, if only to keep her company in her insomnia.

Swallowing against the thickness in her throat— she can still feel the mud, blocking her nose and mouth, cementing her limbs into immobility— she pushes to her feet, picking up the water glass and heading into the kitchen.

She drinks another glassful of water, still wishing it was something else, before setting it down silently and following Andy out the front door.

Andy is leaning against a crumbling tombstone, staring into the nearly complete darkness that surrounds them. She looks tired, and so very alone.

“Why do you think it was your fault?” Nile asks, leaning against the headstone. “Unless being ‘too old’ also means you become psychic.”

Andy huffs. “I spent thousands of years figuring out that slavery was wrong, and I’ve spent centuries fighting it. We all have. Yeah, it’s my fault that we were in Africa, fighting something that I’d only figured out was an abomination maybe a century earlier? Should have stepped in there earlier, should have pulled out immediately once we knew that Sebastien existed…” She trails off, wraps her arms around herself. “What ifs and the inevitability of time are all I’ve got.”

“I don’t know that I can do this,” Nile admits. “Name one good part of any of this!”

Andy glances at her, a quirked grin barely visible in darkness. “Baklava. Sex.” She pauses for a long moment, twisting around to gaze back at the church. “Love.”

Nile opens her mouth to respond, but there’s a muffled thud and she’s on the ground before she even recognizes what it is. Grenade. “Andy, get _down_ ,” she hisses, and is completely ignored.

“Copley,” Andy breathes over the quiet pop of silenced weapons. “He found us. Shit.”

“Who the fuck is Copley?” Nile follows Andy through the graveyard, melting into the dark corners and shadows until they’re to the side door to the church.

Andy pulls a pistol from her waistband, meeting Nile’s eyes and handing it over. “Clear the building, look for the others.”

“What are you going to do?”

Andy shakes her head, doesn’t answer as she glides away to the main doors they’ve been using. Nile gives her a ten-count of a head start before easing open the door and starting her assignment.

There’s no one, just blood and bullet holes. The remnants of a flash-bang litter the living room, the TV cracked but the game still flickering. Slowly, Nile looks around and starts to piece together what happened.

They had been out of bed— someone in the kitchen, the others watching the TV— when the other team had come in. She thinks someone got a few shots off, and there’s a blood stain that says someone got lucky with a sword but beyond that… Nile shakes her head. They’re not here.

Glancing around, she shoves Andy’s pistol into her jeans and starts throwing weapons and anything else she can grab into a duffle. Joe and Nicky’s books, Quynh’s bow, a few water bottles.

An explosion rocks the church, knocking down the wall between the church proper and the living area. Cursing a blue streak, Nile grabs the pistol from her waistband and edges towards the door.

Someone pauses in the doorway, heavily armored, and head tilted like they’re listening to an earpiece. Taking a deep breath, Nile squeezes the trigger twice. They drop where they stand, before they even know she was there.

Rushing forward, she grabs the semi-automatic, jerking it free and slinging the duffles over her shoulder. There’s a car around here somewhere, she needs to find it.

Andy reappears out of the darkness, looking haunted and blood splattered in the light from the fires. “Let’s go,” she growls, jerking her head towards the back of the church. “We need to move.”

Nile nods silently, switching the safety on and falling in behind Andy.

* * *

“It was supposed to be a gift,” Copley says.

Nile snorts before she can stop herself, glancing out the window where the setting sun is pinking the clouds, back at Andy, standing in the doorway and glaring. “It wasn’t your gift to give.”

He stares at her, broken. At least that much got through. “I can take you to them— I didn’t know…”

“Yeah. You’re gonna. And then, when we’re done? We’re going to have a long chat about the ‘greater good’ and slavery.” She doesn’t bother to hide her anger.

She and Andy pump Copley for information on the drive, pulling more information from him than she thinks he realizes that he’s giving. Andy’s preferred language might be violence, but she’s as good as any interrogator Nile’s ever met— the good ones, the ones who cared about truth more than pain.

Thirty shooters on site, mostly special forces from various nation’s militaries, Keane from the US, and focused on the lab floors.

And then they’re at Merrick and the noise starts.

* * *

Seventy-two hours later, she’s freezing her ass off on yet another drug runner’s plane, flying east out of Minsk this time and glaring at the happy couples, cuddled under blankets.

Well, not cuddled. If she didn’t know them, she’s not sure she would even notice beyond a squad that’s been working together for a long time. Nicky and Joe are reading, switching books every so often. Quynh is napping, Nile thinks, but she’s also the hardest of them to read. Andy is definitely napping, wedged between Quynh and a pallet of… something.

Nile is theoretically reading, but she keeps drifting off, only to choke awake. She doesn’t know how the others can stand it, can sleep through the constant death, but they do. It still wakes her, every time, but she’s gotten better about not waking the others at least.

 _Hold on, Sebastien_ , she thinks. _We’re coming._

**Author's Note:**

> That's two members of Andy's family that have been killed for being witches. She's never going to forgive humanity for it, even if she's not giving up hope.
> 
> If Copley can put together that board on his own, he doesn't need Booker to set up the plan. Might make it easier, but he doesn't need it.


End file.
